I mentioned previously that a friend of mine who was a long time Moscow resident said it was common in the 1960s and 1970s to have days reach 100°F. I think I’ve seen less then 10 of those over the last 20 years.
And all of those 1960s records was during the global cooling “Coming Mini Ice Age.”
For those AGW Chicken Littles, this is from today’s Spokesman Review, which remembers as well:
In 1961 things got so hot, fire detectors started buzzing. On Aug. 4, Spokane tied the record of 108 set on July 26, 1928. On that hot day in 1961, John C. Parker’s fire detector went off in the attic and he called the fire department, according to a story on the front page of The Spokesman-Review. The solution? A wet sponge. The detector cooled off and stopped the buzzing. After the firemen left, Parker turned his sprinkler on his roof to cool the attic.
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Lewiston, Idaho was credited with the hottest place in the nation on Aug. 4, 1961, at an unbearable 115 degrees. Ephrata and Walla Walla hit 114, Lind 113 and Pasco recorded 112.
Temperatures over 100 degrees aren’t too common in Spokane. Since 1881, Spokane has had about 60 months with temperatures at or above 100 degrees according to records from the National Weather Service. The last four times Spokane had days over 100 degrees was in 2015, which was also a bad year for fires in much of Eastern Washington.
On July 6, 1968, the Spokane Daily Chronicle wrote about record-breaking 100-degree weather, which was the “greatest in 87 years.”
On June 23, 1992, Spokane broke the record for that day with 101 degrees. Spokane novelist Jess Walter, then a reporter for The Spokesman-Review, sought out the office manager for Norco Air Conditioning.